Weather Eye: Rain may lead to flooding, slides; weekend will be dry

Today will be a wet day for sure. Forecast charts had a couple inches of rain for us and more in our foothills. Coastal amounts could be 4 to 6 inches before things dry out Friday afternoon. The silver lining in all this rain is that the weekend looks at least partly sunny and dry, that’s D-R-Y.

With high snow levels today streams and rivers will be full in many locations both in Washington and Oregon. Travel could be difficult with flooding and mudslides. Be careful or better yet stay home until the weekend if you can.

Colder air aloft will follow the pineapple express and put an end to the rapid melting of the mountain snowpack. The snow is deep in the Cascades, and it will absorb some of the rain. After the deep snows of December, the snowpack in the Washington Cascades ranged from 108 percent in the north to 123 percent above normal in the southern Cascades at the end of the year. April 1 is the official end of the snowpack year but if this keeps up, which it has so far in January, it will be the 14th time in the last 17 years of records with above-normal snowpack. Good news. Snoqualmie Pass has had the most snowfall in the last 20 years.

The good news through all this is the hours of daylight are getting a wee bit longer. Reflect this in a poem by local reader Nancy Zacha.

“Decorations coming down, can turn a smile into a frown. Christmas lights lit up the night, but now it’s dark — that can’t feel right. This lady’s sad to see lights go, she liked the Christmas lighting show. But nature, quick to compensate her, has scheduled sunsets to be later. Day by day, as time goes by, the sun stays longer in the sky. Sunrise, sunset, grow apart. Increasing light lifts up the heart. January might bring snow; we’ll see just how the forecasts go. More likely, here we’ll see more rain. We’re used to that — we can’t complain. Winter’s here, with no regrets, it cares not for our fusses, frets. Let January have its way, warmth will come another day.”